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Back from the Grave

Hope you guys are ok out there and have moved on to bigger and better things. We’re keeping the site alive just out of a sense of history – if anyone ever wants to know about Demand Studios and eHow, here’s the story in all it’s sordid detail.

This email popped up in our inbox and we just had to share.

The funny thing is that both Richard and I still have permissions. I went in and checked the queue just for a laugh and discovered I could still claim the one or two articles that were up there.

It was a good run while it lasted.

CORRECTION: We reported incorrectly that someone left Demand Media and then put up the wrong picture in our last post. We’re too lazy to change it. Thanks.

Since DMS dumped me three years ago, I haven’t had the chance to rant to anyone about it. But here’s my story for what it’s worth. Way back in the Ice Age (2010, or thereabouts), I discovered eHow and had lots of fun (and made a bit of money) writing totally inconsequential articles based on what George Costanza would call “Nothing.” Either I lost interest or eHow shut down, but in any case, I ended my “career” there and went on to other things. About a year later, I got an invitation from an outfit called Demand Studios to join them as they had just acquired eHow. I thought, what the hell and signed on. From there, I went on to make a tidy little sum of money until the company decided in 2013 to pull ALL its articles and either send them to compost heap or have them redone by its newly-appointed stable of “Experts.”

Up till then, anyone could write for DS, which was now DMS. As long as you could string a legible sentence together and explain something relatively well with the help of Google, of course, you were in. Then, all of a sudden, DMS began branching out into graphics and all sorts of other non-literary ventures, which left me and a lot of their most loyal “worker bees” out in the cold. The kicker was, though, that they were going to replace us all with writers who actually WERE experts in their various fields. This was never said in so many words, but as the months dragged on and the forums filled with the angst of people who wanted to write, the so-called writing as indeed on the wall. Once they reopened for business, it took awhile for the queue’s to fill again, but when they did, the editing became much more stringent and impossible.

About that time, I got the first Dear John email, informing me that my permissions in the Food sector were being revoked, and “thanks for the memories,” or something like that. Not long after that, the same happened with my Gardening permissions. Poof. Gone. Finis.

So I learned a valuable lesson, if nothing else. NEVER, and I mean, NEVER trust any site that promises money for writing. It’s nice during the courtship and the honeymoon, but once “real life” sets in, those companies all too often decide to pull the plug, without even so much as a goodbye kiss. Other online blogging sites such as Persona Papers and Bubblews have also gone the way of the wind. The developers make their money and run.

So that’s my story. The last time I logged on to DMS, there were the same old yakkers in the forums bragging about all their expertise and permissions and dispensing hallowed information as if they were kneeling at the Holy Grail.

All true. It’s been a year since I last had anything to do with Demand Studios, Studio D or whatever the shit tank is calling itself these days. To this day, it remains one of the worst content farms that ever existed in terms of the way the company treated the people off of whom they made their millions, even though most of the people who helped make it a heinous company to work for have moved on to spread their special brand of torment to other unsuspecting human beings in other workplaces. But in the end, all content farms are the same and for them, the worst thing writers and editors can do is believe that they can make it on their own, produce their own online content and compete with them. More power to everyone who’s kissed the devils goodbye.